Facebook Searches: What if Your Old Friends Are as Boring As You Are?

So, who exactly do you want to find on Facebook?

Plotnik has thought about his friends from the past. Each time he thinks about searching for them, he says....nahhhh. If I didn't want to talk to them for the past forty years, why now? The few good friends he had years ago are mostly dead. But there might be exceptions.

One is Carol, with whom Plotnik traveled to Mexico many years ago, Before that trip she was a great friend, but, well, Plot did not behave very well on that adventure, and afterwards things were never the same. But she was so cool, and Ducknik met her later and liked her too. Plot wishes Carol had a Facebook page but she does not appear to.

Then, there's his friend Tom, who was the first real Eastern blueblood Plottie ever ran into. Tom was the first to turn Plotnik on to jazz, as well as to most of the other delicious vices that made so much sense when we were young and invulnerable. Tom went to Selma to march with Dr. King and afterwards he and Plotnik lived together for one semester, but went their separate ways. Last heard, Tom was a forest ranger somewhere in...Oregon? He doesn't have a Facebook page either.

And Dennis. Denny was a jump off a high diving board into a sponge. You knew it made no sense but it was more fun than studying. He and Plotnik ran around a lot together once. Denny would keep find another diving board and Plotnik would search frantically for a sponge.

These three young people taught the young Plotnik about himself. Before knowing Carol, Plotnik hadn't felt particularly attractive. That she was interested in him was miraculous. Tom taught Plotnik he could keep his feet on the ground when tripping through the Ozone. Tom needed to learn that lesson better.

And Denny loved confusing people. In college, he always had dates with at least two women, and would often need Plottie to take out one of them. For a shy kid, this was found money. Plottie lived in a beautiful little basement room high in the Berkeley hills with a view of the Golden Gate bridge and a rented piano next to his bed. Denny would bring women to listen to Plotnik play. Plottie knew the right songs. Jeez, what a year.

It took many years for Plot to work out that Dennis always listened when Plotnik played. He was teaching his friend something too, something that came out of the music, or the simple act of slowing down to listen. But Young Plot was too awestruck to understand that then. He just felt grateful for a friend with moxie, whose favorite expression was: if you don't want to do something, ask permission. If you do want to do it, do it.

Before Dennis, and Tom and Carol too, Plot was headed for a degree in Sameness. After knowing them, he was a fool for awhile, but he woke up. Now he is so boring he puts the Nightly News to sleep. He wishes his old friends had Facebook pages,but Jeez: what if they're boring too?

Meanwhile, everybody else, please stop requesting that Plotnik take quizzes or surveys or competitions. Plottie doesn't HAVE ten favorite boy bands and he doesn't want to compare his IQ to yours, a'ight?